Twin Cities has lowest unemployment of any major U.S. metro

A slew of recent lists has named us snobby and brainy, bike-friendly and outdoorsy. But here's a ranking that carries a little more weight, and comes backed by harder data: The Twin Cities has the lowest unemployment of any major U.S. metro area, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Just 4.7 percent of Minneapolis-St. Paul area residents are
looking for work, which is a low enough figure to dethrone former
list-topper Oklahoma City, now in second place.

The
least-employed major metro -- that's an area with more than 1 million
residents -- is Memphis, Tenn., which sits at the bottom of the list, in
slot 49, with 9.5 percent. Compare all these numbers with the national
unemployment rate of 7.6 percent.

Other low-performing
metros include the nation's three largest cities: New York is ranked
37th on the list, with 7.9 percent unemployment, and followed by Los
Angeles with 8.3 and Chicago with 9.1. On the other side of the
spectrum, here's the top ten, based on data from May:

Rank

Metropolitan Area

Rate

1

Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI

4.7

2

Oklahoma City, OK

5.0

3

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

5.2

4

Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX

5.4

5

Birmingham-Hoover, AL

5.5

6

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

5.6

7

Columbus, OH

6.0

7

Richmond, VA

6.0

7

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

6.0

10

Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

6.1

10

Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC

6.1

For even
lower unemployment rates, turn to smaller cities -- most of which happen
to be our neighbors. Topping the overall metropolitan area list is Bismarck, North Dakota, which has just 2.4 percent unemployment. The rest of the top five boasts Fargo, Iowa City, Sioux Falls, and Ames, Iowa.